Home Affairs Dept to investigate after millions of South Africans’ personal information may have been leaked online

The Home Affairs Department has confirmed that it is investigating a massive data breach which has seen the records of as many as 33 million South Africans exposed on an unsecured internet server.

An Australian security developer made the discovery on Tuesday but it’s suspected that the data may have been uploaded about two years ago.

The Home Affairs Department was only able to confirm that it was looking into the data breach but committed to providing a comprehensive response on Thursday.

About 27 gigabytes of data containing the names, full identity numbers, income, employment history and even home addresses of 33 million South Africans have been uploaded onto an unsecured server.

Security developer Troy Hunt says it’s not known how many unauthorised parties have accessed the data.

“The worrying thing about it is that the time stamp on the data dates all the way back to April 2015, so I don’t now if that’s been used for the last two-and-a-half years or if the data was just downloaded two-and-a-half years ago.

The two Gauteng-based companies with apparent links to the data have accused each other of being responsible for the breach.